The emergence of private space actors may soon enable the growth of the novel market segments of space research and exploration, space resources utilization, and human access to space. The interdisciplinary field of Planetary Protection has to keep up with these advances. Planetary Protection is defined as a set of guidelines that aim to prevent the forward contamination of celestial bodies with biological material from Earth and the backward contamination of the terrestrial biosphere with extraterrestrial biological material. As space entrepreneurs acquire and develop the resources and competencies for commercial access to space, significant questions are expected to be raised in the future with respect to potential forward and backward contamination issues, particularly with respect to activities between Earth and Mars. Although such private activities do not seem to pose a serious Planetary Protection threat at the moment, certain preparatory steps need to be taken in order to prudently inform the relevant policy-making procedures. This work describes the application of the Contingent Valuation Method, a useful tool of the environmental economics discipline, with the aim of demonstrating a novel approach to estimate the economic valuation of the external benefits of preventing forward and backward contamination between Earth and Mars. Particularly, via a survey specifically developed for this purpose, a set of questions are used to elicit the perceived economic value that respondents place on the prevention of forward and backward contamination; the survey is administered to a national probability sample in Greece, and the generated data is processed through statistical analysis. The Contingent Valuation Method is a popular and well-established stated preference valuation technique; these techniques are often the more suitable choice for ex-ante valuations of future changes, and are currently the only known approach to capture all the aspects of the economic value of non-market goods. Through an initial proof-of-concept in Greece, the goal of this work is to provide useful insights on the expected external benefits of a national Planetary Protection policy to regulate future private space activities between Earth and Mars, and to encourage a larger-scale application of this tool in other countries around the world.

私人空间参与者的出现可能很快将促进空间研究和探索，空间资源利用以及人类对空间的利用等新兴市场领域的增长。行星保护的跨学科领域必须跟上这些进步。行星保护被定义为一组指南，旨在防止天体受到来自地球的生物材料的正向污染以及地球生物圈被地球外的生物材料的向后污染。随着太空企业家获取和开发用于商业用途的资源和能力，未来在潜在的向前和向后污染问题，特别是在地球与火星之间的活动方面，预计将提出重大问题。尽管目前这种私人活动似乎并未对行星保护构成严重威胁，但仍需要采取某些准备步骤，以谨慎地告知有关决策程序。这项工作描述了环境经济学学科有用工具“或有估值法”的应用，目的是展示一种新颖的方法来估算防止地球与火星之间向前和向后污染所带来的外部利益的经济价值。特别是，通过专门为此目的进行的调查，使用了一系列问题来得出受访者在预防向前和向后污染方面的感知经济价值；该调查是针对希腊的国家概率样本进行的，生成的数据通过统计分析进行处理。或有评估法是一种流行且公认的陈述偏好评估技术。这些技术通常是对未来变化进行事前评估的更合适选择，并且是目前掌握非市场商品经济价值所有方面的唯一已知方法。通过希腊的初步概念验证，这项工作的目的是对国家行星保护政策的预期外部收益提供有用的见解，以规范未来地球与火星之间的私人空间活动，并鼓励更大范围的发展。该工具在世界其他国家的应用。这些技术通常是对未来变化进行事前评估的更合适选择，并且是目前掌握非市场商品经济价值所有方面的唯一已知方法。通过希腊的初步概念验证，这项工作的目的是对国家行星保护政策的预期外部收益提供有用的见解，以规范未来地球与火星之间的私人空间活动，并鼓励更大范围的发展。该工具在世界其他国家的应用。这些技术通常是对未来变化进行事前评估的更合适选择，并且是目前掌握非市场商品经济价值所有方面的唯一已知方法。通过希腊的初步概念验证，这项工作的目的是对国家行星保护政策的预期外部收益提供有用的见解，以规范未来地球与火星之间的私人空间活动，并鼓励更大范围的发展。该工具在世界其他国家的应用。